A police cruiser sits in the driveway as crime scene tape surrounds the home of Nancy Lanza on Dec. 18 in Newtown, Conn. / Jason DeCrow, AP

by John Bacon, USA TODAY

by John Bacon, USA TODAY

An acquaintance of the family of Connecticut mass murderer Adam Lanza says he may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility, foxnews.com reports.

And The Washington Post quotes a Lanza family friend as saying Lanza's mother was considering moving to Washington state so Adam could attend a special school there.

"He was her whole life," Mark Tambascio, a restaurant proprietor and close family friend, told the Post.

Foxnews.com reports that Joshua Flashman, a Marine who grew up near the Newtown school, said he believes Adam Lanza targeted Sandy Hook Elementary after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school "more than she loved him."

Flashman, 25, is the son of a pastor at a church where many of the families of the victims worship.

"From what I've been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed," Flashman told the website. "Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off."

Nancy Lanza, 52, would have needed court approval to have an adult committed to a psychiatric facility.

Flashman's father, Pastor Richard Flashman of Beacon Hill Evangelical Free Church in Monroe, Conn., said in a statement that "the information Josh spoke to them (Fox News) was hearsay and not confirmed.... I am perplexed why Fox News would run with it."

The pastor's secretary, Eileen Bell, said the pastor is not the source of the information his son provided. The Lanza family did not worship at Beacon Hill and Pastor Flashman did not know them, she said.

Foxnews says authorities trying to determine a motive for Friday's gruesome explosion of violence that left 28 people dead, including Lanza and his mother, are looking at the possibility that Lanza was angry about his mother's plans for his treatment.

Lanza, 20, attended Sandy Hook in his youth, and Flashman told foxnews.com that Lanza's mother had volunteered there for several years. Two law unnamed enforcement officials told the website they believed Nancy Lanza had been volunteering with kindergartners at the school. Foxnews.com, citing unnamed sources, said most of Lanza's victims were first-graders whom they believe Nancy Lanza may have worked with last year.

Multiple sources have said that Adam Lanza was very bright but suffered from Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, and unspecified mental and emotional problems. USA TODAY has not been able to confirm the information.

Liza Gold, a forensic psychiatrist at the Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, says that the families of mentally ill patients face heavy burdens -- and can be the most vulnerable to harm. That's partly because a mentally ill person has more contact with family than anyone else, she says.

Most people with mental illness are not violent, Gold notes. Mentally ill people are far more likely to harm themselves -- or be injured by others who prey on them.

When a psychotic person does become violent, "the most likely one to be killed is his mother," Gold says. "She's the only one who never walked away."